Social Listening

The brand I chose was Curology. Overall people are very happy with the company, I actually chose to talk about this product because I recently placed an order for a custom formula on their website. The companies brand or value proposition is creating a custom formula to improve skin texture, pigmentation, acne, etc. Curology's promise is to help you achieve your ideal skin. Some negative comments I've seen regard Curologys customer service or missing packages. I wanted to mostly highlight these as these are the things that can make or break a brand and are really important for their overall value proposition.  This first one was a comment left by Flore.hawk_soprano expressing her challenges with the brand both with communication and missing packages.  

Another comment by  petersen_courtney stated, " your customer service is awful. I canceled my subscription and was still charged." again pointing to a recurring theme with bad customer service. In general, the comments were positive, such as estherhorselover said, "Curology is the only thing that has cleared up my skin almost all the way. The treatment is wonderful, and the moisturizer is the only moisturizer that soothes my redness and makes my skin feel hydrated instead of tight. 🙌". I have had a good experience with them so far but I see the recurring theme of poor shipments, missing packages as well as poor customer service when it comes to responding to these complaints and concerns. Overall the positive comments I see overwhelm those that are bad and I have high hopes for myself. Curology is trying to promote customized skincare for everyone that's easy and effective, they promote this on Instagram and through brand ambassadors, which is primarily how I started hearing about them.

This Is a high-profile and specific example. Bretman Rock is a popular youtube and social media influencer. In this photo, he is promoting Curology as a brand ambassador. Through this, I believe they are trying to build brand recognition by using high-profile influencers. Personally, I believe they are exceeding, being a brand that was created in 2014 they are well known and reached me through such marketing tactics, prompting me to try this brand out. What they are doing is new in terms of the skincare world, until recently it has been very difficult to get a custom skincare recommendation without going to a dermatologist and spending a ton of money, therefore Curology is paving a new way for skincare and making a name for themselves with results that show. They are especially showing this in their social media posts of such influencers and regular people whose skin has been transformed by this brand. Thus using social media best practices to expand their brand, recognition, and expanding sales. They also do a fair job responding to customers that have commented on their posts via social media. In one of the photos above, you can see Curology responding to a negative comment urging them to reach out via Instagram DMS. I think it was good that they responded, especially to the complaints because it helps people feel heard. The only thing I would do differently as the brand manager is to work harder to fix the problems commonly expressed. Possibly changing shipping methods or responding to the DMs they receive because I saw that it was a common comment that many who expressed concerns regarding missing packages etc, never heard back from Curology. 

Through this assignment, I learned how active Curology is and some of the things I've read or learned about in class are reflected in their marketing tactics.